Living my life like a child who has only known love

A few weeks ago, I went on a Vision Quest, something I had been thinking about for years, but never found the time, the space or the moment that felt right.  My childhood experiences made me feel leery of ceremony or ritual; it made me feel unsafe, uncertain.  As the Director of Women's Mountain Passages, a nonprofit that worked with women to reconnect with their strengths, I had started to slowly come to terms with ritual as a healing place, at least for other women.  I respected what they gained out of it.  While I still don't embrace it, now it seemed like the time for me to use nature as a way to check in with my life and it's direction.

My job often leaves me feeling disjointed, confused and unconnected.  As the CHE Director , I have this amazing opportunity to work with community folks to make change son core issues, injustices created long ago and perpetuated today through our crazy structures and enforced by history and complacency.  And I love that. But I work in the structure and struggle with Audrey Lourde's words, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." So I found myself feeling trapped in the the mismatch between the Center's mission  and the city's limited ability to be responsive to community needs.  I found myself operating off old stories, old premises, out of fear and not faith.  Afraid of every action that I did or did not do and the ramifications that it might have for me, the Center, the city, the community.  Caught between attempting to follow an incredibly confusing, continually unfolding maze that left community and staff members frustrated and tentative and being called out as aggressive, challenging, rebellious or confrontational when I questioned processes, sought changes that would make our work responsive to the lived experience of the communities with which we seek to work.

After two days of processing, discussions, thinking and trying to shift old tracks in my head, I came up with my intention for my 24-hour solo... to release fear and live my life like a child who has only known love.  It seemed big, too big.  Way too big.  But during my solo, I focused on Mateo and what he'd been teaching, his inspiration to approach each day with curiosity.  I wrote,

When I hear Mateo wake in the morning, I wait outside his door and listen to him jabber or move about legs kicking in the air for a few reasons - so that he will know time alone, be content in that and he can begin the process of self independent of me.  And when I walk in, his eyes brown, grow big beneath his lashes, a grin spreading across his face, legs kicking, arms a wind mill swirling against the crib sheets, swish diaper moving in his pants, a giggle.  His movements tell me, "ah mama you are here.  I'm so glad to see you this morning." And he looks forward to another day where his job is just to explore, grow love and be loved.

Just before I went to sleep, I wrote, "With the darkness, I will lose time until there is dawn."  And in the morning this,

It is morning, has been for a while.  My pack sits on the the road headed back to camp.  I can see the sky gray-blue, not fully formed by the day and while I cannot see it, I know that the sun awaits. I'm sitting on a rock, white rimmed with pale green lichen just outside of my campsite in the middle of the creek listening as life washes over the rocks and away.

I release fear in the form that I have known it, an all consuming energy draining need to control and let the children know that I can protect them and that pain derived from evil will not come back again.

I release control and replace it with openness and curiosity. I will teach the kids this gift, this freedom.

I release shame - it is not mine to own.  All of the children are good.  your nature is clean and pure of heart.  I release shame.

I release guilt.  Your truth is the TRUTH.  it is not yours to own. Actions forced do not of your nature, but instead of the nature of the bad people.  I replace it with light.

I release anger at myself for myself and all the littles.  I replace it with laughter and light. 

With each statement, I snapped off pieces of limbs that had died on their trees and threw them into the water, some just in front of my rock and others past the blocks I saw ahead.  And for two weeks, I have been engaging, curious, open and hopeful - pulling away from blame, pulling away from defensiveness and listening, really listening until today - more shut down words from work, "I'm not sure what is happening hear, but Lisa you are confrontational and __ is fragile."

To which I respond, "That's your label."
"See now you're being aggressive to me." 

And to the littles, I say, "Asking questions is okay. Move on in your world of curiosity!!! Don't become what her definition of yourself."

You're here Mateo

11/28/09


Mateo, you sit in your seat squirmy, arms moving in a windmill as if you expect to grab something, a shadow that has stayed in your mind from a past lifetime. Sometimes your arms reach out in a perfect, circle, the beginnings of a hug or expectation to grab onto something. You’ll do this as a startle response. You sounds are squeaks, enough movement to tell me that you’re awake and exploring or grunts to tell me that you’re working food down your system. You stare off into space, mostly sideways, now it’s to your left, through the blue mesh covering in your seat. They say that you can’t really see straight ahead and that nature let’s you see about 10-15 inches, the distance to my face. So I wonder what your mind is connecting with. You must notice your own hands as they fly jerky across your face hitting yourself in the ear, making motions to pluck our your eye or grab your face, as if in distress, as if saying, “Um, I don’t like this very much.” Mom and I have fun creating cartoons out of your movements, putting words and thoughts to them making them say more than your cluster of cells formed into automatic nerve responses really means.

When you’re sleeping, a kaleidoscope of emotions run across your face as a slight grin moves above your chin before the old man face, a grimace that begins in tight wrinkles in your forehead moving down through tightly pursed lips, takes back over and then releases, to smooth baby skin. I smile every time I watch you, eye lids dropping, mouth hanging open, hand behind your head and on your chest. I can’t believe I made you, that your little body grew in mine before it came out to be its own thing.

You’re fighting sleep now, mouth moving in slight motions as if feeding, hand curled in front of your face, eyes slightly open and then closed, open and closed, as your breath starts a rhythmic breathing, your stomach keeping you awake, you start to throw your arms and squeak, grant almost cringe. The gas grin is back and you are fully with me again. A yawn, sigh another gas grin as your legs squirm under the chenille blanket of soft yellows, brown, beige and whites cut together in overlapping blocks of color.

I have been almost equal bits happy and sad as we start this journey together. Happy every time I watch your face, feed you, see your legs stretch out in wakefulness as I lay you in your bed to change you before you take your bottle or sleep with you on my chest or on one of mom’s bed’s my hand resting on your stomach so you can feel the warmth penetrate your skin relaxing you, your stomach. I am happy when I am with you.

I am sad, grieving really that I didn’t get to see you born, that I lost the rest of my small supply of breast milk yesterday. I wanted to give you that, for months, a connection we shared that made you stronger every day – one of two things I’d planned on the whole time I was pregnant – breast feeding and a vaginal delivery. They are both gone, like childhood dreams that fade as life takes over. Everyone says – at least he’s healthy, at least everything turned our okay, you should focus on that. And they say it as if I am not grateful to have a healthy, content little boy. It’s somewhat akin to the responses I get about my childhood, while long over still lingers in my cells, holds firm in the alters that circle in my head. That was 30 years ago, focus on the positive. Focus on the positive.

And I will, I do. I just need to grieve the loss. Grieving the loss, gives space for the light, the energy, the here and now. Even as I marvel in you, your energy, your spirit, I need to grieve the loss.

33 days and counting

I’m sitting in the middle of what I am sure my mother would label as chaos, otherwise known as my office slowly turning into a nursery. I have a baby due in about 33 days and a major report about the same time. The room is this green color that I think someone thought would be sage, but came out a bit brighter towards the lime side. I have never liked it, I ran out of energy before I could paint it. I do spend some time in here, but not the same amount as in other places in my house. I had to paint my bedroom first – two shades of bright purple/blues layered on top of each other. I found that I love purples several years ago by accident when I noticed that all my backpacking clothes fell into that color scheme. A few years ago, my friend told me that purple was healing – now I’m even more attached to it.


Sitting all around me are piles of paper – organized chaos I would say to my mom - related to the evaluation report that I’m doing for the non-profit that I founded. I’ve been working on it on and off now for months – just over a year longer than I have been working on creating Mateo – this little baby boy that has grown from two cells to a being that stretches inside of me moving my belly from left to right and back again. I can feel him often. He stops me in the middle of whatever I’m doing. “What are you doing in there?” I say out loud, while I sit on the couch, while I’m driving, in meetings.

I have ultrasounds weekly because I’m so old – or at least the medical model says I am. They call it “advanced maternal age.” What that means is once a week, I get to see Mateo –head down, face inward, arms wrapped around his head in what I imagine to be him sucking his thumb. His ribs move in and out as he practices breathing – there is no air and he’s not moving in amniotic fluid just exercising. And you can see his heart working independent of mine at almost twice the rate as if it’s making sure to supply him with the energy he needs to connect all neurons, little wires reaching out, firing up and stepping back. Sometimes when I wake at night, I swear that I’m feeling his pulse in mine – rapid excited so I reach out to my neck and it’s only my own that I’m feeling, rapid excited.

We are both preparing. His movements make me smile. He has hic-ups – they pound in slight rhythmic movements just below my ribs on the left side and then they are gone. He’s moving now, just under my breasts. It’s a new place for so much activity. I’m not sure what it is. I get confused by his positioning sometimes even though I can see it on the ultrasound. Next week, I’m taking a permanent marker with me and outlining him - maybe in purple. Then I’ll know what he’s doing.

We play with each other already. I’ll feel him push again my belly, ribs, diaphragm, so I’ll take my finger tips and push back. He responds. It seems like from the ultrasound, the part that has the closest contact with my skin is his butt. So he’s butting me all of the time. From what I read, he can see light, his eyes open and close, he hears, knows my voice, senses stress. Now he’s layering on the fat. We are connected now – literally, figuratively. I want to be the one that cuts the cord, a symbol that I am committed to helping him grow independently into his own being. That’s the mom’s job right – to give us ourselves.

Missing Home

All of the windows in the house are open, at least the ones that do open. The others are over 80 years-old and have been caulked or painted shut and I could only afford to replace so many at once. I’m sitting on the couch with a pillow behind my back, on my lap with my laptop ironically stationed their while I write.


I’d rather be outside writing, but I couldn’t figure out how to balance all of this on my swing, with my pregnant belly creating my balancing point and my feet stopping short of the porch floor. So the next best thing on the couch, windows open over my head to the right, in-direct light pouring in. I can hear the outside things I like cicadas, birds, crickets, church bells (ringing twelve) and of course the things I could do without car wheels wooshing by on the pavement, dogs in the background growing closer and farther away, my neighbor yelling back in her gravel voice to one of five dogs who’s favorite pastime is barking. With the music off, I can hear my computer fan smothered by the pillow on my lap trying to get enough air. Someone is yelling, a whistle is blowing and still cars woosh by, sometimes with music sliding out their windows, uncaught harmonies as diverse as the people driving. The cicadas have the most to say with their sentences rising in a heavy pitch before falling silent for a second and starting again. Something I just read on the Internet said they are most active in morning before it becomes 80 degrees. Today it’s only supposed to be 73, so does that mean they will chat with me all day? I miss my woods in Meadow Valley. With only three houses past mine, if I hear a car against the gravel, it is occasion to look out the window with the thought “who is on my road?” And even then I was irritated by those folks just driving home.


I want to be a writer, just a writer, noticing what happens around me, writing about it, letting others experience it. I want everything else to go away.

ADD and me

It's late - really late for someone who's seven months pregnant and needs to work tomorrow.  The good news about ADD is that when I settle into someone I can stay with it for a while and maybe - that's why I try not to settle too often.  I find myself sitting at the computer on skipping around from facebook to hotmail, to gmail to my work e-mail looking for something quick and easy to do. It let's me check something off the to-do list that I never create.  I have tried that, creating a to-do list.  And its funny when I do - at least if you're not me.  I'll start creaing it by pulling together one of my piles and even before I have written down the 3rd thing on it, I have started doing one and two. Sometimes, the things I have to do - seem so easy, that they look ridculous being on the list. So I'll start making the calls or writing the letters or putting my clothes away only to get distracted by something else.  Really I'm amazed that I get anything done.  So that fact that I'm sitting at my computer two years after I first created a blog that I have never added any posts and doing that - nothing short of a miracle.  Here's to good thoughts and new starts.